Insights27 November 20232 min read

Navigating a hybrid work culture

By Jamie Simmonds

How we're navigating a hybrid working culture

HCR Law recently interviewed Jamie Simmonds, our CEO on how TheTin are managing growth with a hybrid working culture that continues to change and evolve in line with market trends and employee expectations.

Q: Is quiet quitting a bad thing?

Yes, it suggests that there is an underlying problem regarding communication and understanding with regards to roles and responsibilities. If a company doesn’t have an accurate view of employee sentiment, it can end up in a position where people feel overworked and undervalued.

It’s important to have a good grasp of how employees perceive and feel about the company, this can be done via eNPS (Employee Net Promotor Score) metrics as one example of the many options available. Staying on top of that requires leadership commitment, but the end result could be priceless. If companies know there are issues, they can make changes so employees feel more valued and want to put the extra effort in.

Q: Having a remote workforce can be really hard to manage. Staff are less visible and managers may not always know what their teams are working on. You can’t simply walk over to their desk and ask a question. How do you manage this?

We were already digital by nature, but what we did when we went to a purely remote-first basis was to adopt a daily morning standup, so we all get to see and hear everyone in the business explaining what they’re up to. It allows the team to see all the different external and internal projects going on so nobody is left out of the loop.

We’ve found that Miro is a great tool for running workshops remotely, and our use of project management software and ticketing makes it easy to keep track of specific task allocation and resourcing.

Q: Why is the four-day working week not being tested by more organisations? Is it a realistic future?

We haven’t trialled a 4-day working week, because we offer flexible and remote-first working. Our staff can work whenever they need to as long as it doesn’t get in the way of others doing their work. In practice, this means people work at different times of day and we work together to make it happen.

The disruption of setting up a 4-day week could be a factor in more businesses not wanting to trial it, however given our place in a global industry I can’t see it being a problem. We already work with companies across multiple time zones who also work different days of the week, so if there is a will to push through the initial set up, once it’s bedded in I can see it working well.

Download HCR's Law's Future Workspaces Insights

Jamie’s quotes are featured in HCR Law’s ‘Future Workspaces Insights - Growth’. Download your copy here.

HCR Law is an award-winning Top 60 UK law firm with 800+ staff across 10 locations.

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